Obama will set precedent by winning re-election w/8%+ unemployment
He may win. With the lock on power both our party overlords enjoy, the qualities of those standing for election are virtually irrelevant. It's just a matter of holding ones nose and picking one of two skunks. Many consider Obamas fur more lustrous and so he could pull it off.
Unemployment fell dramatically in Roosevelt's first term, from 25% when he took office to 14.3% in 1937. However, it increased slightly to 19.0% in 1938 ('a depression within a depression') and fell to 17.2% in 1939, and then dropped again to 14.6% in 1940 until it reached 1.9% in 1945 due to World War II when increased manufacturing and conscription decreased the labor supply number.[94][95] Total employment during Roosevelt's term expanded by 18.31 million jobs, with an average annual increase in jobs during his administration of 5.3%.[96][97]
"The most significant change to our presidential forecast model this year is that it contains an economic index, which is used to guide forecasts along with the polls.
In fact, as you may have seen since we began our short daily summaries of the model’s output, new economic data often has just as much influence over the forecast as the latest poll from Ohio or Florida.
I have some fairly strong views about the right way to use economic data in a forecasting model like this one. This is fundamentally a very challenging problem because there have been only 16 presidential elections since World War II, and yet there are dozens and dozens of plausible economic variables to pick from. (The Federal Reserve’s Web site, in fact, now publishes about 45,000 economic statistics.)
The historical evidence is robust enough to say that economic performance almost certainly matters at least somewhat, and that poorer economic performance tends to hurt the incumbent party’s presidential candidate. Likewise, it seems clear that the trend in performance matters more than the absolute level — otherwise, Franklin D. Roosevelt would not have been re-elected easily with an unemployment rate well into the double digits (although rapidly declining) in 1936.
But we just do not have anywhere near enough to data to make confident claims about exactly which economic variables are important. For that matter, most of the more obvious choices for economic variables have performed about as well as one another on the historical data anyway. Each one gets some elections right and some wrong.
Let me explain some of the choices I made about the model in light of this problem."
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...-on-elections/
Spot on, however I suspect Romney wins via SuperPacs, and sheer money.
"Consider two media markets, Denver and Wheeling (which is a market evenly split between Ohio and West Virginia). Mr. Kerry received roughly 50 percent of the votes in both markets. Based on the large gains for Democrats in 2008, Mr. Obama should have received about 57 percent of votes in both Denver and Wheeling. Denver and Wheeling, though, exhibit different racial attitudes. Denver had the fourth lowest racially charged search rate in the country. Mr. Obama won 57 percent of the vote there, just as predicted. Wheeling had the seventh highest racially charged search rate in the country. Mr. Obama won less than 48 percent of the Wheeling vote.
Add up the totals throughout the country, and racial animus cost Mr. Obama three to five percentage points of the popular vote. In other words, racial prejudice gave John McCain the equivalent of a home-state advantage nationally.
Yes, Mr. Obama also gained some votes because of his race. But in the general election this effect was comparatively minor. The vast majority of voters for whom Mr. Obama’s race was a positive were liberal, habitual voters who would have voted for any Democratic presidential candidate. Increased support and turnout from African-Americans added only about one percentage point to Mr. Obama’s totals."
Obama won more votes in 2008 because the racists didn't think they would even need to vote (he won the election because he was also pre chosen by the power elite but that's another story).
Robomney is the chosen one this time, look at Obama's re-election campaign. He's not even trying because he knows too, he's just obligated to put on a show. If you look carefully at the framing and language of the power elite owned media (including the supposedly "liberal biased" outlets), you will see that it is already decided.
There are also redistricting efforts underway to get the desired result, and with electronic voting we won't see the evidence of fraud that we did in 2000.
"Although I have not seen Tuesday’s data yet (and can’t for some time because of a speaking engagement), enough is known to allow some advance comments.
Bottom line: not only is there no bounce so far, the data suggest the possibility of a negative bounce.
Update, 12:35pm: yep, there it is. ~10 EV and counting…"
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/04/the-incredible-shrinking-bounce/
Nice summary of the whole P&N forum here: one contentless, unsupported leftie cheerleading post, and a matching one from the right.
As an aside, I'd love a list of the states Romney is supposedly going to win to get 320 EV.
Obama won more votes in 2008 because the racists didn't think they would even need to vote (he won the election because he was also pre chosen by the power elite but that's another story).
Robomney is the chosen one this time, look at Obama's re-election campaign. He's not even trying because he knows too, he's just obligated to put on a show. If you look carefully at the framing and language of the power elite owned media (including the supposedly "liberal biased" outlets), you will see that it is already decided.
There are also redistricting efforts underway to get the desired result, and with electronic voting we won't see the evidence of fraud that we did in 2000.
..... I suspect Romney wins via SuperPacs, and sheer money.
Nice summary of the whole P&N forum here: one contentless, unsupported leftie cheerleading post, and a matching one from the right.
As an aside, I'd love a list of the states Romney is supposedly going to win to get 320 EV.
Romney wins with 320 Electoral College votes.
End of discussion.
Obama will win reelection, the more I see Romney the more I'm sure of this.Romney wins with 320 Electoral College votes.
End of discussion.
Obama wins the following states:
WA, OR, CA, NM, IL, MD, DE, NJ, NY, RI, MA, VT, MA, HI and DC.
That gives Romney 347 votes. I keep saying 320 just to make it sound closer.